Carbon dioxide is a well known greenhouse gas that is believed to affect global warming. Attempts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide have focused attention on sequestering significant quantities of carbon dioxide in flue gas released from coal fired power plants, for example, as a primary means of offsetting global warming. Current methods for capturing and mitigating the entrance of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere typically use an amine-based solvent to absorb the carbon dioxide in the flue gas and then regenerate the amine-based solvent to release the carbon dioxide for sequestering and/or subsequent processing and/or conversion.
Flue gas is a mixture of various gases including for example carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, nitrous oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and water. Unfortunately, several of the gases in flue gas can react with or degrade the amine-based solvent to form contaminants, such as, for example, various amine byproducts which are problematic for many carbon dioxide absorption processes and systems. As a result, when an amine-based solvent becomes contaminated with amine byproducts, the solvent is typically purged from the system and purified for further use or treated further and disposed of as hazardous waste. Disposing the contaminated amine-based solvent as hazardous waste is both costly and environmentally objectionable. Purifying the contaminated amine-based solvent regenerates the amine-based solvent for further use. However, the contaminants removed from the solvent may need to be treated further or disposed of as hazardous waste which can be costly.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide processes and systems for discharging the contaminants from a contaminated amine-based solvent without the high cost and environmental ramifications of current processes and systems. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.